Was Bill Gates smarter than Steve Jobs?

That’s according to Walter Isaacson, who profiled Apple’s Jobs in a biography. Isaacson spent time with Jobs before his death last month, and recently said that it wasn’t a Gates-like mind that made Apple great.

It was Jobs’ ability to “think different” and marry emotions and aesthetics with technology, much like Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.

The Huffington Post reports that Issacson talked about the difference between Jobs and Gates at a PC.com event in New York Monday.

“I actually think Bill Gates is conventionally smarter, even though it’s a dumb word., but mental processing power — I’ve watched him use four different screens, process information, get to the right answer, boom boom boom,” said Isaacson. “He didn’t have the aesthetic feel or that control freakiness that comes from an artist sensibility that Steve had.”

That’s a lot nicer than what Jobs said about Gates: “”He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”